Authentic miniature Victorian and Edwardian doll’s dolls, toys, games and playthings for the discerning doll’s house child.
Designed and handcrafted by professional artisan Sandra Morris

Thursday, 4 January 2018

Lights, camera, action.....!

I'm finally getting stuck into taking photos for my book. They're what's been holding the project back all this time... both the quantity and the required quality. All of the step-by-step photos have to be taken while I'm actually working at my desk, rather than in perfect 'studio' conditions, so there are many variables in play.... quality of daylight, time of day, etc. I've been fixated on making them as 'standardised' as possible, but I'm not a professional photographer and I don't have commercial studio equipment. After many false starts I've decided that the most important thing is what is being shown, and not that the colours and light quality are identical in each shot. In the same vein, while I'm working, I inevitably get paint and glue on my fingers and I've been stressing about the state of my hands, but of course, they're not the subject of the photos so I shouldn't worry about how they look in the photos either.The first section of the book contains chapters on tools and equipment, fabrics and trimmings and basic skills. It requires 100 photos... some full page, some close-ups of detail. I haven't yet added up the total number of photos required for the projects section, with a chapter for each of the featured dolls and variations, but it will run to several hundred.So instead of striving for completely perfect, professional-quality images, I need to accept that if this book is ever going to be published I have to simply get on and do the best I can with what I've got.

Sandra, just get on and do it! Do you have a good photo editing program on your computer? If you don't have something like Photoshop (which is lovely, but very difficult to learn to use), really consider Photoscape. It's free to download, a small little program, and it can do wonderful things such as setting the brightness of light, fix white balance, and set colour temperature (for overcast conditions, or artificial light when you work at night), so it can really fix everything you missed while taking photographs. You can compare and equalize the lighting in your photos, so your work looks continous. I've been using it for years, and teach it to all my clients who do their own photo editing for social media etc.

Megan... Yes I know! I'm my own worst enemy at times.I do have Photoshop, but as you say, it's overly complex. I have several other free photo editing programmes too, some of which yield better results than others.I might give Photoscape a go though.. if it's as good as you say it is! I'll let you know how it goes.